Barbara Palka Winek

Painting in a lush, dramatic and sensuous style, the Cracow-based artist Barbara Palka Winek specializes in seductively intriguing portraits of women. Her nude subjects are often glimpsed from the back, with the curving, elongated and exaggerated forms of an Ingres figure. Despite this classical sensitivity for the evocative anatomic distortions, Palka Winek’s dominant aesthetic bears greater traces of Expressionism and Cubism, with a strong emphasis on diagonals and perfectly rounded, geometric shapes set within vigorous and thick brushstrokes heaped in layers.

The bodies Palka Winek paints seem to radiate energy, which frames them amidst silhouettes and halos of kinetic colors. This compounds the impression that everything in the painting emanates from the sitter, as if the vibrant reds, blues and oranges of the expressive architecture project outwards from the seated woman. This creates a thrilling tension between the calm and poise of each figure, the careful way their forms and skin tones are applied, and the tumultuous layers and gestural lines of the space around them.